They felt swollen and hard--no longer the smooth rounded boy bottom. I could barely feel the touch of my hands on the hot skin through the numbness that comes when, thankfully during a severe beating, the nerves seem to shut down, minimizing the sting of the final strokes--but not the damage. When I looked down at my hands, they were bloody and sticky from the areas where the punishment had opened my hide.
My bottom was not the only part of me that hurt--there was a soreness throughout my body that feels something like a touch of the flu, but there was one part of me where the nerves were opening back up and the pain was increasing--burning--feeling like I had sat my bare bottom down on a wasps' nest.
My younger brother and sister were crying inside, possibly out of sympathy but maybe out of fear, (there, but for the Grace of God go I.) Robert, who came around me to go back inside after his job was done, couldn't stand the sight, muttering, "Jesus" under his breath.
Ordered to stand at attention, (and not wanting to cover those flaming buttocks with clothing anyway,) it was now time for a good talking to, and the announcement that I would serve one month of grounding--the first two weeks til school ended, I would be confined to my bedroom except for school and meals--no tv, no phone, no radio, no record player--from the time that I got home from school until I went again the next morning, I would think about what I had done in the confines of my room.
Then, I would spend the first two weeks of summer vacation under the same restraints, but rather than going to school, I would serve hard labor to pay for the replaced window that my father would have to shell out the money for. While not working, again I would sit in my room...and if I broke any of the strict rules of confinement.....
I did break some rules. Four times, and four times I straddled the whipping bench in the basement where I had to have the belt applied across my bare bottom--but none of these whippings felt anything like those peach tree switches did.
I actually went to school the next day and within a half hour after I showered after PE, every kid in the whole eighth grade had received first hand reports of what a fourteen year old's bottom looks like after he shoots a window and lies about it.
Needless to say, I never pointed a BB gun at a house again.